Terrorist Attack at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem

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Rabbi Chanan Morrison

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Mar 7, 2008, 5:12:13 AM3/7/08
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"Rarely have terrorists chosen their target with so much malicious care as in Thursday night's attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. In striking the flagship institution of the religious Zionist movement, a Jerusalem landmark whose history is linked with the founding and fulfillment of the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel, the gunman aimed his weapon at the heart of the Zionist enterprise."
Calev Ben-David, Jerusalem Post

"Mercaz HaRav is the flagship of the entire religious Zionist movement. The terrorist targeted a place that symbolizes love for the land of Israel, love for the people of Israel and love for the Torah. No Jewish soul can remain indifferent to the horrible thought that a despicable terrorist attacked a group of young men who were busy studying the holy Torah."
Rabbi David Stav, one of many prominent graduates of yeshivat Mercaz HaRav


"We split a division of values with all the nations of the world. They are destined to advance the world's external aspects, and we advance its internal aspects.
"But Amalek is the exact opposite of Israel's holy aim. Amalek needs to be blotted out in order that God's Name and His throne will be whole."
 
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak haKohen Kook, Shmoneh Kevatzim VI:252


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In order to better understand what Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav is all about, below I have quoted from a personal account of my experiences there (taken from my preface to Gold from the Land of Israel):


In the spring of 1981, I spent a few weeks searching for a suitable yeshivah in Israel for the coming year. Together with several friends, we toured various institutions, until we made our last stop, the Jerusalem yeshivah founded by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in 1924.

I will never forget that first visit to Mercaz HaRav.  Over the years, I have visited and studied in a wide variety of yeshivot in America and in Israel, great and small, "black-hat" and "knitted-kippah," Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist. But this building in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem possessed some intangible aspect – a vibrant idealism, an electricity in the air – that I have never encountered elsewhere. It was as if an aura of the supernal light mentioned so often in Rav Kook's writings had somehow descended and enveloped his yeshivah.

By that time, of course, Rav Kook  was no longer alive. Even his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook, already in his early 90's, was so ill that the only class he was still able to teach was a Saturday night lecture at his home. (He passed away the following year.) Nonetheless, there was something special about the atmosphere at Mercaz HaRav that enchanted me. I admit, the decision to enter Mercaz HaRav was not fully based on rational, logical factors. I cannot claim that I was drawn by the scholarship of the faculty or the erudition of the lectures, since I had not been in the country long enough to fully understand classes in Talmud delivered in rapid-fire Hebrew. And I had never even studied any of Rav Kook's writings. But the special atmosphere that I felt there, a wonderful combination of seriousness and joy, of "rejoicing in trembling," convinced me that this is where I wanted to study.

In the yeshivah, one seemed to absorb the Torah philosophy of Rav Kook by osmosis. At other yeshivas, I had sensed the holiness in the Torah study and prayer, but this was a holiness that came from one's private connection to God. In Mercaz HaRav, one felt that his personal avodat Hashem (service of God) was part of the spiritual connection between the soul of the nation and the God of Israel. When studying in the Beit Midrash, there was an atmosphere of excitement and creative energy, a sense that we were part of a much larger entity. Our intellectual efforts were not just about our own private spiritual growth; we were helping establish the spiritual foundations of the nation.


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For a report on the eulogies of the eight martyred students, see:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125491


"Let the tribes of His nation sing praise, for He will avenge His servants' blood. He will bring vengeance upon His foes, and reconcile His people to His land." (Deut. 32:43)

"He will swallow up death for all time. God will wipe away the tears from every face, and He will remove the shame of his people from the entire earth." (Isaiah 25:8)

With wishes for a Chodesh tov and Shabbat Shalom, and good news,
Chanan Morrison
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